Facebook Spent More Time & Effort Blocking Fake Avatar Names Than Fake Real World News

Author Joanne McNeil recently pointed out the brutal irony:

Years of abusing its own users by demanding "real names" and now Facebook is cratering itself over fake news. Too perfect.

— joanne mcneil (@jomc) November 13, 2016

Facebook's obsession over blocking fake avatar names has been going on for about five years and only partly resolved itself last year after a lot of back and forth negotiations between the company and community leaders like Sister Roma. By contrast, Facebook has been slow to do anything about the promulgation of fake real world news on Facebook, even though it probably influenced the US election:

In the final three months of the US presidential campaign, the top-performing fake election news stories on Facebook generated more engagement than the top stories from major news outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, NBC News, and others, a BuzzFeed News analysis has found. During these critical months of the campaign, 20 top-performing false election stories from hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs generated 8,711,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook. Within the same time period, the 20 best-performing election stories from 19 major news websites generated a total of 7,367,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook.

And so now all of us have to deal with the consequences of this policy focus.Wonder what the real world would be like now, if Facebook had focused less on virtual world avatars, and more on real news chicanery.

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Comments

[Amanda Dallin]

The problem is, who decides what is "hyper-partisan"? Some people will consider Slate and Huffington Post as hyper partisan while others don't. Fake news is one thing, partisan is in the eye of the beholder.

Face Book is a private company and can do whatever they want but any judgements on based on political slants will hurt their credibility just as much as the fake news trending.

[Clara Seller]

Legacy media is in trouble, so I'd really like to get behind the scenes and see how much this crusade to extinguish "fake news" on Facebook is really some kind of attempt to prop up the business of big media.

In this last election cycle, "fake news" actually supplied more credible information than "real" news. In "real news" Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were the most beloved candidates, Bernie Sanders was a footnote, Wikileaks was illegal for common people to read, Native Americans are a bunch of thugs, and the Cold War never ended.

So-called "fake news" is the future for information dissemination and big media is falling the way print media. Trying to snuff it out on Facebook will just send people away from Facebook. I'm all for that.

[Orca Flotta]

I'm just happy I never had an FB account. I may be stupid but at least I'm not a sheeple.

[AmyNevilly]

Yeah, I never saw fake news channels like CNN being blocked even once.

Disgraceful really....

[AmyNevilly]

http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com/uploads/2/7/6/1/27619303/journalists-wiki-tw.jpg

Here's a list of fake news networks that coordinated with the Clinton campaign to stop Bernie Sanders.....with wikilinks email references.....

ABC, CBS, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, MSNBC, New York Times......

All these colluded to produce FAKE NEWS stories....

[Zonker Harris]

I'm fifty years-old and severely handicapped. I've left my home perhaps three times in the last year and am either in bed or on the computer.
I used Facebook as 'Zonker Harris' for at least five years (I can't remember exactly when I started the account). Several days ago they suspended my account and deleted and history I had on friends pages... I never existed there. There was no word of warning and I wasn't aware of a 'real name policy'... I was listed as living in the Galapagos Islands.
I'm frankly amazed that people believe this policy is in any way for their protection. The only use for demanding personal information is to monitor people.
Facebook took one of the only pleasant things in my life away without a care. I won't bother trying to use a false name again... but I won't use me own. Facebook no longer exists to me. I sold £7,000 in Facebook's stock and reinvested it in Google. Bravo, Facebook... I hope the NSA appreciates your due diligence.